The Return Ticket
by stereolightning
Summary: Remus returns from self-imposed exile to join the newly-resurrected Order of the Phoenix. Homecoming turns out to be much more pleasant than he expected. Old friends, former students, and a very fetching witch hang out with him at Grimmauld Place. (Set pre-OoTP.)


_All I really need,_ thought Remus as his train rumbled toward Mumbai, _is a room with a locked door once a month._

Although a long ride in a fuchsia-painted train compartment that vibrated, womb-like, while you slept – that was not so bad, either. And your very own paper cup of sweet, milky chai, with bitter green cardamom pods and powdered cinnamon spicy on your lips, the antithesis of disgusting Wolfsbane potion – that was delight bordering on rapture.

But the best bit, and he would have to remember to hold himself back from enjoying it too much, because it could all go pear-shaped again at any moment, but the best bit, _Merlin_, was that Dumbledore wanted him to come back, and that Sirius would be there, and that Remus might be able to do something useful for them and for Harry. Something _useful_, after a year wandering India again, retracing steps he'd walked in his twenties, in self-imposed exile. The United Kingdom was not an ideal place to be when you were publicly outed as a werewolf by your Hogwarts colleague. Additionally, his gold stretched a bit further here. But Remus could go back now, knowing he could be of use to the Order and to James' son. He knew he really ought not to celebrate about it. These were grim reasons for returning. The Order reformed might mean an upswing in his own social prospects, but this was on the whole a dark, unsavory business, because the fact that there had to be an Order of the Phoenix again at all boded ill.

So there would be no crowing about it, this business of being _wanted_.

Remus had fallen asleep on the train, a habit he had picked up as a boy riding the Hogwarts Express and failed to grow out of. The wool upholstery of the seat had pressed a cross-hatched pattern into his shaven cheek. Dawn light sliced through the narrow train windows.

The sari-clad woman sitting across from him looked up from her book – _Sense and Sensibility _– and smiled behind her wire-framed glasses. Her husband, sitting beside her, had also fallen asleep. They appeared to be returning from a wedding, because they wore garlands of marigolds over their bright clothing. Remus could not help himself; he smiled back.

She put down the book and folded her hands over the cover. "You have such curious expectation on your face," she said.

"Do I?" he asked. She was right; it was full moon tonight, and his jaw muscles were already coiled, braced for the fangs that would tear through his gums.

"Forgive me, I don't usually address people on the train, apropos of nothing at all. But you have – " and here she waved her hand at him in a circular motion, as if performing a charm, but she seemed to be a Muggle, so it couldn't be that – "happiness and an abundance of caution, together. All around you. My husband looked like that on the day our son first went to school."

"Ah, I know that look. I used to teach."

She tilted her head to the left, and then the right. Her square glasses looked a lot like James'. She gave him a funny smile, motherly and girlish at the same time. "My advice is, don't worry too much about him. He will be alright," she said.

She disappeared behind _Sense and Sensibility_ and disembarked at the next stop without another word about his aura or his non-existent son. Maybe she _was_ a witch. Remus had never been able to pick out supernatural women from more normal ones. Lily, for example, had had the rare gift of being able to fly without a broom – although it was really more like gliding, and she had to have a running start, and she had to be in an especially happy mood – but Remus had not known that until seventh year (and had shared four butterbeers with her on the Astronomy tower, and had bet her a chocolate frog that James would jump out of his skin if she flew past his bedroom window). And Remus' mother had always seemed magical in her own way – in her brown work dress and neat scarf fastened with a pin, headed for the insurance office, to do things Remus and his wizard father could not begin to fathom. Also, when Remus became a werewolf, and her hair turned white at the temples overnight – this seemed magical, too. Women were not really his area of expertise, but he liked them, liked all sorts of them – ones that could fly. Ones with magical changing hair. He liked them from a safe distance.

The woman and her husband left the scent of marigolds in their wake.

Remus looked out the window at the dense throng of travelers on the platform – some in Western dress, some not. He had nearly reached the International Floo station. He would be traveling from east to west, temporarily outrunning the night and the moon, and some adolescent part of himself felt like laughing about it. _You can't catch me, moon. I'm on the move._ Perhaps it was the prospect of seeing Sirius again. Remus felt younger. He was going back. He had been essentially homeless since he was seventeen, but it might be something like going home to return to people who needed him. Wanted him.

The train rattled toward his destination. Palm trees blurred and came into focus at each stop. He could smell the ocean on the air.

Remus' anticipation mounted. His attempts to throttle it became futile. He repeated his mantra – _all I need is a locked door. The rest is extra._

But he felt better than he had in a Kneazle's age. With the exception of that day two years ago when Harry's Patronus charged down Draco Malfoy on the Quidditch pitch. That had been transcendent.

The woman had been right; he did feel expectant. Excited, even.

He felt like _Moony_.

...

Sirius had spent most of the last year in a cave above Hogsmeade village, living as Padfoot, living on rats.

"But before that," said Sirius, rummaging through the dust-caked cupboards in the Grimmauld Place kitchen, "I was in Panama. Padfoot was very popular there. I was adopted about nine times by gringos on holiday. And there were these monkeys – howler monkeys! Mad things. And huge fucking macaws. Why is there no tea in here?"

"I'll run out and fetch some."

"No, please, don't go yet. I've been here alone for two days. This house is driving me insane. Which is saying something, given my history."

He looked up at Remus and guffawed at his own tasteless joke.

"I missed you! You absurd prat, you should have stayed here where I could find you. Well, not _here_. Scotland. Or Wales. Stop running away when things get interesting."

"I'm not running away."

"Yes you were. You think you were being noble by getting out of everyone's way, but that's just as selfish, Moony. Where's the sodding _sugar_? What's Kreacher done with it?"

Sirius looked thin, weary, like Remus supposed he himself did. But Sirius had always had dogged energy that no amount of lean living and depressing circumstance could strip from him. It was a raw, untempered thing, that energy – it could be directed at say, self-recrimination, or taunting fifteen-year-old Severus Snape, just as easily as it could be directed at breaking out of Azkaban. Or protecting three kids from a homicidal Dark Creature loose on the Hogwarts grounds.

"There's no Soviet Union any longer, is there?" asked Sirius.

"No. Not anymore," said Remus, shaking off a bad memory. "Why?"

"Oh, I saw something in the paper. Half the news makes no sense, Moony. I missed too many things. I spent the eighties in a ten by ten foot cell. And all these insinuations about Harry make me just –_ livid_. I'd like to meet the editor of the _Prophet_ down a dark alley sometime, and show him how terrifying 'Sirius Black, mass murderer' really is." Sirius said all this while kicking the baseboards, evicting spiders from their hiding places.

"Sirius."

"What?"

"You're doing it again."

"My manic-depressive whinging?"

"Yes."

"I know I am. I'm not stupid."

"No, you're not."

Sirius looked at him and laughed. "You're the same as ever. Mellow Moony. You look like you belong in a Zen garden, with a rake in your hand."

"And you look woefully bereft of tea. I'm going out for a moment to remedy that. I swear not to be long." Was he doing it right now? Was he running away when things got 'interesting'? Surely not.

"Alright," said Sirius. "It's really Kreacher's job, but he's a worthless little minger. Oh, take my gold. Get lots. And ginger biscuits. And sugar. And those crisps I like. And bacon." Sirius opened another cabinet door to find a dead rat with its stiff legs in the air. The specter of Peter, treacherous Peter, hung between them for a moment.

"Don't want much, do you?" asked Remus, hoping to steer Sirius away from further black thoughts.

"Told you, I'm going mad in here," said Sirius, shutting the cabinet door. "All I've had for company is Beaky, and he's not exactly a sterling conversationalist. Plus that portrait of Mum. Cheerful old girl."

The security wards on the house trembled and sang. They both felt it.

"I'll bet that's Molly Weasley," said Sirius. "Dumbledore said she'd be along. Do we look fit for company?"

Remus cast another appraising glance at his own tatty traveling cloak and Sirius' borrowed, moth-eaten robes. At Sirius' hollowed cheeks and unkempt hair. "The best we can do, I think."

"Yeah, we are a couple of nightmares. Full moon tonight, isn't it?"

"Regrettably. So I will have to leave before sundown."

"Nah, you don't. I'll lock us in the wine cellar. Padfoot can keep you company."

Remus' whole body lit up like a Christmas tree topper. He had not had company for _that_ in sixteen years. More to the point, he was picking up with Sirius exactly where they had left off, as if the last decade and a half of incarceration and exile and grief hardly mattered to either of them. As if that night in the Shrieking Shack was yesterday, and that final Christmas dinner at the Potters' was the day before that. As if they hadn't each suspected the other of selling James and Lily to Voldemort.

Walburga Black's portrait screamed.

"Sin! Filth! Blood traitors and monsters defiling the house of my fathers!"

"Shut up, woman!" bellowed Sirius, jogging into the corridor, kicking up more dust.

Remus followed, absent-mindedly popping his knuckles, which had begun to ache.

" – devil of a time getting him out of there. Hello, Remus, Sirius," said Arthur Weasley, who even in dated tweed robes looked vastly more fashionable than the two men who greeted him.

"Hello, Arthur. Mother, would you _shut the hell up_?" Sirius drew the curtains and fired a spell at them. And then another hex, purely out of spite.

"Hello, Professor Lupin," said a Weasley twin, who stood on the top stair, twirling his wand between two fingers.

"Hello, Fred," said Remus, hazarding a guess that it wasn't George. Apparently he guessed right, because neither twin corrected him.

Then the Weasleys were upon them, all red hair and warm bluster, hugging, shaking hands, dragging school trunks and shopping bags into the fusty old house.

"I thought I'd roast a chicken," said Molly. "You have got an oven, Sirius?"

"I do!" said Sirius. "You're brilliant. Come in, I'll give you a tour. Mind your elbows, though, the place is crawling with cursed objects."

Fred and George locked eyes, delighted. Remus knew that cursed objects appealed deeply to the twins. He had seen Filch confiscating contraband from them plenty of times.

"Hallo, Ron," said Sirius leading the procession of Weasleys. "How's your owl?"

"Pig's great," said Ron, smiling. "Where's Professor Dumbledore? I thought he was supposed to be here."

"He's coming tonight," said Remus.

"Hullo, Professor. Didn't see you there," said Ron. "Blimey, it's dark in here."

"Hi," said Ginny. Remus blinked rapidly. Ginny had grown a foot taller and from this angle, in the dim corridor light, she was now a dead ringer for Lily Potter.

"Hello," said Remus, caught between reverence and amusement.

As she came closer to the torchlight, the resemblance lessened. More freckles, different eyebrows. Boisterous Weasleys trouped through the house, up the stairs, into uninhabited rooms. It felt like the first day of school. Remus snapped into prefect mode, which in his case meant hanging back and watching the melee. Lily had positively lambasted him for that in their fifth year, when she realized she would have to do the actual enforcing of school rules. He had tried to make up for it during his year of teaching.

After a while, he smelled rosemary and lemons, and he followed his nose. Molly working miracles in that catacomb of a kitchen.

"Sit," she said, pointing to a high-backed, carved chair. "You're too thin."

Before he finished easing his rapidly deteriorating pre-transformation body into the chair, she waved her wand and a plate of warm rolls floated toward him. Oh, they looked amazing – curved and golden-brown and promising buttery delight.

"He can't eat anything, Molly," said Sirius, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, his dark hair falling into his eyes. "It's full moon. He'll just be sick."

Molly looked stricken. "Not even a little bit?" she asked.

Remus shook his head. "I'm sorry, Molly. Your cooking smells desperately good. I'm sorely tempted."

She winced. "I'll put something aside for you. For tomorrow."

"There's no need," said Remus.

"It's no trouble," said Molly. "You're positively skeletal, the pair of you. You're no use to the Order if you're wasting away."

Sirius uncrossed his arms and let out a soft huff of laughter. "Remember Marlene McKinnon and those horrible casseroles?"

Remus chuckled. "Yes. She had a gift for them. My apologies, Molly. We're a couple of ghosts, here, gibbering about the old days. We're unaccustomed to company and creature comforts."

"Oh, stop it, you're both younger than I am," she said.

The wards jangled a second time, and Remus looked up. Sirius stiffened, dog-like.

"I thought Dumbledore was coming at eleven," said Remus.

"He is," said Sirius. "Molly, keep your wand out."

Remus stood up, feeling the fury of his every vertebra and metatarsal as he did. The moon was catching up. Cacophony sounded from the narrow entrance hall. Somebody yelled. Father Christmas clattering up on the rooftop, this was not. Remus dashed after Sirius, achy but alert. The wolf's heightened senses were waking. Noises were always louder pre-transformation, and colors brighter.

Remus rounded the dark, wallpapered corner. Daylight socked him across the jaw.

The troll leg umbrella stand lay knocked aside. A cloud of dust bloomed in the summer afternoon light angling through the open door, silhouetting Alastor Moody's broad frame.

"Next time, watch where you put your boots, Tonks," said Alastor.

A pretty witch in olive cargo pants and a too-small band t-shirt hopped to her feet. She shook decade-old dust out of her fluorescent pink hair. Dust particles floated around her, shimmering like stars.

"Sorry, sorry," she said. "I'm completely mortified. Wotcher, Sirius."

Sirius squinted at her, uncomprehending. Alastor shut the door and reset the wards. Twice.

"It's me," the witch said. She gritted her teeth. "Your cousin Nymphadora. And don't ever call me that again."

Sirius' whole body relaxed, and then swelled with happiness. "Merlin's fucking stars, Dora. The last time I saw you, you were –"

"Tiny. Yeah. I took after Mum in the end. Got tall."

Sirius stared at her. She laughed. Her laugh was warm and throaty, like a clarinet fluttering through an eight-count.

"You can hug me, coz. I know you're not a murderer," she said.

Sirius beamed and clapped his arms around her in a bear hug. "Christ," he muttered into her t-shirt sleeve. "Just – Christ."

That someone else knew his innocence – that he had more allies than he knew – must have meant a great deal to Sirius.

"Who's your friend?" asked Nymphadora. No, _Dora_, Remus reminded himself. Or was it _Tonks_? Her dark eyes met Remus' over her cousin's shoulder.

"Yes, who is your friend, Sirius?" asked Alastor with deadly seriousness.

"Mad-Eye, you don't recognize old Moony?" asked Sirius.

"I hardly recognized you, Sirius," said Alastor. "Those photos they're running of you in the Prophet are several years old."

"We're both worse for wear, I'm afraid. Hello, Alastor. I heard that you took over my post at Hogwarts," said Remus.

"In body, though not in spirit," said Alastor. "Or the other way around."

"How is Harry?" asked Remus.

"I only saw him the once. But he looks like James," said Alastor.

"Yeah, he does," said Sirius, smiling. "Except the eyes. Come in. The Weasleys just arrived. The house is full of people." He strode into the hall and called, "Molly! False alarm! It's friends, not foes."

Dora patted more dust off her clothing. "_Tergio,_" she hissed. Her weak spell failed to have the desired effect. She swore softly under her breath. She cast another, which also floundered.

"Can I be of assistance?" asked Remus, Gryffindor chivalry taking him over.

She winced, embarrassed but considering him, and then threw up her hands. "Yeah. Have at it," she said, stepping closer.

It was awfully intimate to cast a spell on someone you had just met. Remus tried to broadcast by his body language that he was not a threat to her. Not in his present form, anyway. He dragged his wand in front of her, neatly hoovering her street clothes.

"Hey, brilliant," she said. She grinned. Radiant. Fluorescent. She stepped closer. "You smell like marigolds."

"Sharp nose," he said.

"You don't know the half of it," she said. She closed her eyes, pursed her lips, and transformed her nose from a cute button to a long, aquiline snoot.

He laughed in surprise. She grinned again. She must be covering her embarrassment with a display of her talents, he thought. It was such a youthful thing to do. Good for her. Young and pretty and gifted. He felt himself smiling back at her. They followed Sirius and Mad-Eye into the sitting room.

"I take requests, too," she said, turning her hair turquoise.

"Wicked!" said Ginny, who sat on the faded damask sofa, tossing a quaffle.

Dora smiled at Ginny. Ah, there was an affinity there. Remus could already tell. Lovely, brave girls. He admired them from a safe distance. Metaphorically and literally.

Remus' wand vibrated in his hand. Damn. Time for Cinderella to turn back into a pumpkin. Or was that how it went? The lupine brain asserted itself, scrambling his human memory. This was perhaps the most dangerous part – the part where he still looked human, but operated at well below his own intelligence. This was the part where, for example, you could forget to take your potion. Or to lock yourself up.

Sirius appeared like a haggard, merciful angel and patted Remus on the back. "Time to go," Sirius said.

Remus choked on his thanks. Speech would desert him altogether soon. _Thank you, thank you, namaste, _he willed his eyes to say for him. All he needed was a locked door, and Sirius was going to make sure he got it.

Sirius pulled back the ornate Turkish carpet, revealing a trap door with a silver handle. Sirius yanked it up, dislodging more dust and spiders. A narrow metal staircase spiraled down from it.

Remus shot an apologetic smile at Dora as he descended. _Safe distance, safe distance. _This is how it would always be: Remus descending into the underworld while the normal people carried on above. A twinge of pain that had nothing to do with the wolf sparked across his chest. Well, _anyway._ What was he thinking would happen? That Dora would turn into an ocelot and come with him? She belonged up there, with the living, the whole, the young. Sooner than later, he would explain why he had abandoned their conversation. And then the equation would balance again.

The wine cellar smelled less unpleasant than the rest of Grimmauld Place. The stone walls and cedar shelves kept it fresher. Sirius waved his wand at the trap door above and locked it.

"Arthur's agreed to lock it from the outside as well," said Sirius. "So don't fret yourself to death about that."

Remus' shoulders slumped forward in relief. "Sirius. I – "

"I _know_, Moony. You don't have to spell it out." Sirius smirked and then turned into Padfoot.

Remus sat on the stone floor and pet the dog behind the ears for half an hour. His swollen joints throbbed. He could not hear the people above, which was a good thing, because the sound of human voices would arouse the wolf's murderous urges. He exhaled and closed his eyes.

"This is just – I thought this would never happen again," said Remus.

And then his tongue became inhuman, and he could not say more. As the curse surged through him, searingly painful as always, he held onto that feeling of sparkling gratitude.

...

He woke to the smell of strong coffee and the sound of Molly tutting over them both.

Sirius groaned.

Oh, God, had he hurt him? The wolf had been alone for so long. Maybe he had forgotten how to be around Padfoot.

Remus sat bolt upright on the stone floor.

Sirius groaned again.

"Are you – " Remus croaked. Hoarse and tremulous.

Sirius turned over on his side. Purplish half-circles had formed under his eyes. "You kept Padfoot up all night playing tug-of-war with a shoe, you selfish berk. I didn't get a wink of sleep 'til sunrise."

Remus clutched his chest in relief. _Thank God, thank God._

Molly surveyed the damage on Remus' arms and face. Remus realized he was in the company of two absolute saints. "Let's get you upstairs," she said. "Then you can eat a proper meal. Both of you."

Had Sirius not eaten for Remus' sake? In solidarity? That was entirely uncalled for. He was going to tell him as much once he worked up the energy.

Remus half-slept again as Sirius levitated him up through the trap door and deposited him in a bedroom. Remus entertained thoughts of protest – he was a grown man, he could do this himself – but the words died in his raw, scratchy throat.

He blinked groggily at his new surroundings. A canopied bed with green and silver hangings. A neat row of framed photographs. A wingless snitch on an oak desk. And Dora, in an armchair, with a fat red scrape across her brow. Regulus' bedroom was rapidly becoming a makeshift infirmary.

"Wotcher," she said. "What are you in for?"

"Rough night," said Remus. "What are you in for?"

"Umbrella stand again," she said.

She met his eyes and grinned. Her hair was as pink as the Indian train compartment. She uncrossed her legs, stood up, and sat next to him on the bed.

"Give me your hand," she said.

He offered it to her, though he didn't know why she wanted it or why he let her have it. Her fingers were warm and surprisingly strong as she opened his palm and turned it toward the light.

"Are you reading my fortune?" he asked. She couldn't know yet that he didn't _have _a fortune – in both senses of the word. Neither gold nor a future.

"Nah, I was pants at Divination. I just wanted to see how that felt. Also, couldn't believe no wedding ring. Thought you might have _Disillusioned_ it. Wouldn't be the first time a wizard's done that. Although honestly, you don't seem the adulterous type."

He rubbed his eyes.

Two days ago he had been in exile, and now a beautiful witch half his age was flirting with him in Sirius Black's house. She didn't know what he was yet, and she would certainly not flirt with him once she found out. But he could linger a moment in her false assumptions. He could play Normal Wizard for a minute, and humor her, before he lost her. _A locked door, a safe distance..._

She gently toyed with his fingers one by one, studying his calluses and lines.

"Am I going to get my hand back anytime soon?" he asked.

"Nah, don't think so," she said. "Hey, are you coming to fetch Harry Potter next month? I'm working on a plan to get his aunt and uncle out of the picture for a while. Should be fun."

Her dark eyes twinkled with mischief and interest. There was something positively Marauder-esque there.

"Correct me if I'm mistaken, but there isn't a Nymphadora star or galaxy or heavenly body, is there?" he asked.

"Nope. Mum broke with Black family tradition. I got a mythology name instead. And so did you," she said.

"Yes. I did," he said, acknowledging her astuteness with a nod. She must have been a good student. Although perhaps not in Charms.

He leaned back against the headboard and stifled a yawn. What an unexpectedly pleasant homecoming this had turned out to be.

Remus was amused.

Later, he would be impressed.

And then, seriously smitten.


End file.
